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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Swami Vivekānanda

Interview, part 2

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Christianity, Early and Theravāda, German Tradition, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

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Alasdair MacIntyre, Anagarika Dharmapala, Donald S. Lopez Jr., G.W.F. Hegel, Henry Steel Olcott, interview, intimacy/integrity, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Rammohun Roy, skholiast (blogger), Swami Vivekānanda, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas P. Kasulis

The second half of Skholiast‘s interview with me is now available, for anyone interested.

Two concepts of altruism

08 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, Foundations of Ethics, French Tradition, Judaism, Mahāyāna, Modern Hinduism, Morality, Roman Catholicism, Self, Vedānta

≈ 31 Comments

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Aristotle, Buddhaghosa, Christine Korsgaard, Derek Parfit, Emmanuel Lévinas, Epicurus, nondualism, obligation, Paul Hacker, Paul Williams, Śaṅkara, Śāntideva, Swami Vivekānanda

The Catholic Pauls, it seems clear to me, oppose ethical egoism in strong terms. Interestingly, however, they do not spend much time attacking it; instead, they attack a kind of altruism that is very different from their own. And their positions interest me greatly because of the way it highlights differences among philosophical concepts of altruism.

Ethical egoism of some description – say, as advocated by Epicurus – is a perfectly respectable philosophical position. One can say that one’s reasons to benefit others are all ultimately based on benefit to oneself, if one’s own self-interest is rightly understood. Neither Paul has a great deal of sympathy for this position, as far as I can tell, but it is not what they take as a target for their attack.

Rather, they reserve their greatest ire for a position that derives other-orientation from ātmanism – or at least from nondualism. Continue reading →

The Catholic Pauls against nondualism

04 Wednesday Aug 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Bhakti Poets, Foundations of Ethics, French Tradition, Judaism, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Modern Hinduism, Modernized Buddhism, Morality, Roman Catholicism, Self, Sufism, Vedānta

≈ 62 Comments

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Advaita Vedānta, al-Hallāj, Eknath, Emmanuel Lévinas, Hugh van Skyhawk, nondualism, Paul Hacker, Paul J. Griffiths, Paul Williams, Ramprasad Sen, Śāntideva, Swami Vivekānanda, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath, Wilhelm Halbfass

A curious phenomenon in the study of South Asian and especially Buddhist traditions is the number of Catholic scholars named Paul who have approached these traditions – and especially what Skholiast has called their ātmanism – with a critical eye. The two thinkers I have primarily in mind are the late Paul Hacker (whom I discussed last time, and the living Paul Williams. (The thought of Paul J. Griffiths, who moved in his writings from Buddhology to Catholic theology, bears a strong resemblances to these other Pauls, though I have less to say about him today.) That these men are all named Paul can only be a coincidence. That they are all Catholic is less so; for there are striking affinities in the ways that they (in many respects independently of one another) approach South Asian and Buddhist tradition, affinities that are far less coincidental.
Continue reading →

Schopenhauer and the tat tvam asi ethic

01 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Foundations of Ethics, German Tradition, M.T.S.R., Modern Hinduism, Modernized Buddhism, Politics, Self, Vedānta

≈ 19 Comments

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Advaita Vedānta, Arthur Schopenhauer, Dermot Killingley, Engaged Buddhism, Hajime Nakamura, Joel Brereton, nondualism, Paul Deussen, Paul Hacker, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Swami Vivekānanda, Upaniṣads

In studying Indian philosophy today one is often confronted with a question that can be surprisingly tricky: what counts as Indian philosophy, anyway? Sometimes what we think of as ancient Indian thought might be something quite different.

Perhaps the boldest statement of this point was the 1962 article “Schopenhauer and Hindu ethics,” by the late German Indologist Paul Hacker (now translated in a collection of Hacker’s writings by Hacker’s student Wilhelm Halbfass). Hacker is reacting against what was until that point a commonplace in the presentation of Indian philosophy – an interpretation presented as uncomplicated fact, for example, in Hajime Nakamura’s A Comparative History of Ideas – which turns out to have a far more modern provenance.

The commonplace in question is what Hacker calls the tat tvam asi ethic, an idea found above all in the works of Swami Vivekānanda. This ethic is Vivekānanda’s influential attempt to use Advaita Vedānta to support an altruistically engaged politics, closely parallel to what would come to be called Engaged Buddhism; it would later be picked up enthusiastically by other modern Hindu thinkers like Radhakrishnan. Continue reading →

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